Claudia Baez

Claudia Doring Baez / Mexico City, Mx, 1960

Known for her reinterpretations of beloved artists’ seminal works, Claudia Doring Baez does not disappoint withher latest series, Patti Smith Land 250. For Claudia, stepping into the shoes of the great downtown poet & rockstar, Patti Smith, seems effortless with this bold, unapologetic and painterly series. Claudia’s ability to take on the visual vocabulary of each of the artists she is in dialogue with is masterful. In this case, the source material for her paint-ings is a series of black & white polaroids taken by Patti Smith on her travels throughout her career, many while on tour with her band. These intimate polaroids of special places, loved one’s possessions and various scenes only a poet would encounter were published to accompany an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art. Each polaroid was printed along with artist commentary and Claudia devoured the book completely. Making notes, drawings and diagrams on every page, Doring Baez was not only preparing a series of paintings, but also getting under the skin ofPatti Smith, as an actor might prepare for a role.

Armed with this information of stories and images, Claudia works quickly to create paintings that might have come right out of Patti Smith’s mind as the poet was in the act of creation. Surreal landscapes emerge and new subtexts are created with each painting. Their composition using several of Patti’s captured images could only be conceived and executed by Claudia’s level of research and understanding of her subject matter. An image of Robert Mapplethorpe’s opulent shoes in a sea of velvet green, an Arabian horse in a Namibian desert or a discarded, blood-red swing-set superimposed over the gravestone of W. B Yeats create a feast for the eyes, but also tell deeply emo-tional stories of relationship, loss, sacred places and exotic adventure; the stuff of which artists like Patti Smith and Claudia Doring Baez are are truly made.